Social and emotional wellbeing of MYP IB Australian students

The philosophy underpinning the International Baccalaureate, which encompasses a holistic view of education, has deep connections with the ideas behind social and emotional learning. Social and emotional learning plays a key role in the MYP curriculum to develop knowledgeable, balanced and caring students. This study examined the social-emotional wellbeing levels of students participating in the IB MYP. Students from six MYP IB schools (government, non-government, rural, all boys, all girls, co-ed independent) completed questionnaires that provided an indication of their empathy, resilience, school satisfaction, confidence, bullying, social and emotional wellbeing and mental health, as well as demographic factors.
The research informed questions of how student social and emotional wellbeing status varied for different year levels, genders and school types. Secondary data analysis using social and emotional wellbeing databases (e.g. from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children) were also used to compare IB MYP results with Australian normative data.